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My life as an Indian : the story of a red woman and a white man in the lodges of the Blackfeet

page 44

44 MY LIFE AS AN INDIAN gather in quiet and lasting friendship, but two women never; they will be quarrelling about nothing in less than three nights, and will even try to drag their husbands into the row. That is the reason we live separately; to be at peace with our wives. As it is, they love each other, even as my friend here and I love each other, and thus, for the good of us all, we have two lodges, two fires, two pack outfits, and enduring peace." Thinking the matter over, I realised that they were right. I knew two sisters once, white women?but that is another story. And after I married, and my wife and I took up our home with a friend and his wife for a time?but that is still another story. Oh, yes, the Indian knew whereof he spoke; neither white nor Indian married women can manage a common house- hold in peace and friendship. I enjoyed myself hugely in that great camp of seven hundred lodges?some thirty-five hundred people. I learned to gamble with the wheel and arrows, and with the bit of bone concealed in one or the other of the player's hands, and I even mastered the gambling song, which is sung when the latter game is being played around the evening lodge fire. Also, I attended the dances, and even participated in the one that was called "As- sin-ah-pes-ka"?Assiniboin dance. Remember that I was less than twenty years of age, just a boy, but per- haps more foolish?more reckless than most youths. In this Assiniboin dance, only young unmarried men and women participate. Their elders, their par- ents and relatives, beat the drums and sing the dance song, which is certainly a lively one, and of rather an abandoned nature. The women sit on one side of the lodge, the men on the other. The song begins, every one joining in. The dancers arise, facing each other,

44 MY LIFE AS AN INDIAN gather in quiet and lasting friendship, but two women never; they will be quarrelling about nothing in less than three nights, and will even try to drag their husbands into the row. That is the reason we live separately; to be at peace with our wives. As it is, they love each other, even as my friend here and I love each other, and thus, for the good of us all, we have two lodges, two fires, two pack outfits, and enduring peace." Thinking the matter over, I realised that they were right. I knew two sisters once, white women?but that is another story. And after I married, and my wife and I took up our home with a friend and his wife for a time?but that is still another story. Oh, yes, the Indian knew whereof he spoke; neither white nor Indian married women can manage a common house- hold in peace and friendship. I enjoyed myself hugely in that great camp of seven hundred lodges?some thirty-five hundred people. I learned to gamble with the wheel and arrows, and with the bit of bone concealed in one or the other of the player's hands, and I even mastered the gambling song, which is sung when the latter game is being played around the evening lodge fire. Also, I attended the dances, and even participated in the one that was called "As- sin-ah-pes-ka"?Assiniboin dance. Remember that I was less than twenty years of age, just a boy, but per- haps more foolish?more reckless than most youths. In this Assiniboin dance, only young unmarried men and women participate. Their elders, their par- ents and relatives, beat the drums and sing the dance song, which is certainly a lively one, and of rather an abandoned nature. The women sit on one side of the lodge, the men on the other. The song begins, every one joining in. The dancers arise, facing each other,